Land : Strain, 18.08.001

MATTA STUDIO

David Bruce (American, b. 1980)

Tim Rusterholz (American, b.1987)

Strain, 18.08.001

Foam, Steel, Resin, Alumina Oxide & Coal Slag

2018, United States (New River Gorge, WV)

Processes for acquiring and mapping a landscape and its surface have evolved dramatically with developments in 3D scanning and imaging technologies. These technologies emerge as primary research tools for engineers and surveyors; reducing time in the field, augmenting vision with hard topological data, and updating their practice. For professionals tasked with representing landscapes both real and imagined, 3D imaging technologies usher in a new paradigm. For artists exploring concepts surrounding land as subject, the future is expansive, layered and riddled with potential.

Strain, 18.08.001 is a sculptural examination of the materials, forces, and forms contributing to the development of landscapes. Exploring intersections between technology, art, and environmental perception artists climbed and deployed 3D scanning technology to survey and record topological features of the vertically exposed rock of the New River Gorge, West Virginia. A region where the perception and use of its resources are contested by public and private industry. The physical stresses found deep within the subsurface strata are metaphorically reflected in social, political and economic conditions of the area. Using data recorded directly from the sandstone surface scans, individual components were processed into 3D digital representations, then combined and manipulated to achieve a unified form. This work presents an object with subtle reference to time, space, mass, and the internal forces found in geologic environments that together form the landscapes we inhabit.